10 | christine choi

overture

We’re going around in long coats and skinny pants, saying how terrible things are in synths. Form will (delineate)(echo) the protagonist’s emotions. Come on, take your jacket off. Pulling a world of lack over everything, we give each other permission.

For instance, you could store the value read from an input into a variable.

“We started from a deep hole,” said James Poterba, (a professor)(a member of the bureau that declared the recession’s end). I wake up remembering that bird move you pulled to dodge my incoming kiss.

are you free for a late lunch?

I can hear the tiniest :whine: when
your eyes open.
You say maybe sand or water.
I say Ooh.
You say boiling water.
We both gasp at Ziploc bag.
We remain intrigued by chopped carrot.
The night had a crack and
quiet humananimals brimming with
instants and ivory.
You assert sternly,
as light trembles before roosters,
that there’s a difference between “human” and “animal”
and continue crossly on your own. . .

adorn yourself with synthesizers, eyeliner, and dense light.

I’ll take care of you. An expensive shower curtain, state of the art meat substitute, and a machine for dehydrating thin air. I’ll take care of you–

My mother gifted me red high-heel boots. My father sent me off with a bag of peeled nut meats and a microwaved sweet potato in a Ziploc bag. My brother gave me an electric toothbrush he won in a raffle. My sister sent me a pocket-sized timer shaped like a hen. New tools for survival.

I was hanging around with assholes. I stepped outside to send a text. I hear that there’s a war on. I was hanging around with assholes–

“Open” may mean something linear. “Circling” may go up and up. Buy a second animal, microwave everything, something’s changing, someone’s arriving. Shh. Do you hear that? (takes off into the dusky air) Do you hear that? (knocking, then texting, then calling) Do you hear that? (Repeated, for emphasis).

the animal is on its back. come quick.

You (say you need something)(address me by name). Intention without expression is death mice, chewing. Hours pass. We have another round. I can see my breath.

Can you ride a horse? I ask.No. I prefer vehicles that respond reliably to input.
I recognized your shape. In low light. I dialed 1-3-0 repeatedly.That’s sweet of you to think of me.
How can I love you in a way that will allow me to lose you?Send me a detailed email by Tuesday and I’ll process your request.

I think the insides of my chest have fallen out.The interface is open, programmable.
But I’ve never understood you.You might want to wear your bag differently, so you can get it off quicker.
Are you serious?Do Stuff, Create Something, Formulate a Plan. . .

This you explain to the death mice, running across the table.
Here I am, blank stares in the radish patch again, considering how to thicken a heart skin. There you go, implementing diplomacy, swimming across the lake like elk in late July, calling on bandsaws and motorcycles – their sounds
(inhabit our interiors)(go tearing up our coasts),
but we say nothing.

god, put down your gun, can’t you see we’re dead?

Is it (a joke)(a flashlight)? Humor settles birds down onto the wires. We (learn)(teach) by building up a vocabulary of objects and how they connect to other objects – what messages they understand and transmit. Struggling to carry a bin of laundry across the lobby. Backing a vehicle (out the garage)(over fragile grasses). These programs (behave)(accumulate) by passing messages between objects; objects connect to each other, whittling away pithy green fruit. Messages instigate, process, or control other objects. I’ll be hanging around with assholes. I’ve stepped outside to send a text. I’ll be hanging large sheets of butcher paper to curl on a cable. (Open)(Call) if you care to join.

christine choi passes days puddle-jumping in matters of the heart, investigating human/animal/machine relationships, and producing unusual sounds, images, or texts. She holds an MFA from the California College of the Arts, and her writing has appeared in Paul Revere’s Horse, In Posse Review, and BANG OUT, and has been performed at NOMA Gallery, Soundwave Festival ((4)), POW!POW!POW! Action Art Festival, and Small Press Traffic’s Poet’s Theater Festival. She nests in San Francisco. www.beanchoi.com